PerelandraBoost / Overdrive

From the vendor

A flexible drive pedal that can go from clean volume boost to smooth overdrive. Includes a 2-band tone stack for treble & bass.

The Perelandra Boost / Overdrive is a recreation of the Xotic BB Preamp, a flexible tone machine that takes you from a clean volume boost to a nice smooth overdrive with a 2-band EQ to shape the tone. It was first released in 2005, a few years after the AC Booster and RC Booster, and the “BB” refers to the Marshall Bluesbreaker amplifier.

Despite the name, the BB Preamp has nothing to do with the Bluesbreaker pedal. In fact, like the AC/RC Booster, it’s very similar to the Ibanez Tube Screamer, but with an active Baxandall tone control added before the output buffer so that the treble and bass can be independently boosted or cut.

In fact, if you look at the schematic for the BB Preamp, you can see that the original Tube Screamer tone control stage is left intact, but with the tone knob is fixed at 5% rotation (i.e. almost fully to the dark side of the control) by using a 1k and a 18k resistor. The main difference between the BB Preamp and the AC or RC Booster is the presence of this Tube Screamer tone control stage to shape the tone going into the Baxandall EQ.

Version 2 of the Perelandra is a full redesign based on traces of several versions of the BB Preamp in 2021. The PCB supports the standard BB Preamp (called the “version 1.5”), the AT (Andy Timmons) model, and the Bass BB Preamp. The documentation includes instructions for each variant. The default is version 1.5, the current production model.

The Perelandra Deluxe is a hot-rodded version that incorporates modifications from the two Custom Shop models of the BB Preamp, the “MB” (mid boost) and “Comp” versions. Since it’s a lot more complex, we’ve split it off into a separate project. While the Deluxe version can emulate either the 1.5 or AT with the right control settings, the bass version is not supported on the deluxe version and can only be built on this PCB.

Note: This project uses a type of capacitor that has been temporarily discontinued by WIMA. Please see our news article about the issue and the substitution spreadsheet for project-specific recommendations. We are stocking a limited supply in the mean time. The build document has not yet been updated to reflect this.